Totally switching up is not something I'd like to see personally. When I start up a new character, I want to feel like I stepping into my favourite ass-kicking slippers of doom. Essentially, I know what I love about them already, but the real challenge is to decide what to do with their awesomeness.
This... although to be honest, if the game is a 50 year pregression into the futre from Cyberpunk 2020, I damn sure don't expect any of the Game famous NPC's from the books to still be alive... maybe one of the Arasaka children, or even the old man himself all hooked up to machines (it was stated his body rejected all attempts at cybernetic implantation) totally dependent on them, liek the old man and the bed in Roujin Z. Blackhand, Johnny boy, and most of the "good" npc's died during firestorm. Lundee of militech was stripped of rank and thrown in federal prison, his company taken away from him. Bartmoss playing dunderpoo with the net was a horrible idea and we can hope that whole mess that led to v3 is just swept under the rug and ignored completely like everything else about v3. So who is actually left... Alt and her downloaded consciousness masquerading as a rogue AI is really the only major NPC who could have really survived that long in any viable way. Nomad Santiago was a nomad... they typically don't live that long and don't have the resources to keep up with cybersolututions to aging for the long term. If he is alive, he is one mean old codger by now... possible but not altogether likely.
Murphy and Thompson may still be alive.... but that's really about it...
Although I wouldn't mind finding out what happenned to Adriana Young, the clone from Land Of The Free.
Really I was hoping for a reboot of 2020, only set in 2070, which as a by product would give us the same characters. But that is not the direction they are going.